


Cultural Misunderstanding

by Mawgon



Series: Dwarves care for consent - Series [5]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, F/M, Happy Ending, Humor, Rape is not funny, Villain failing at evil plans is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 04:33:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6223996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mawgon/pseuds/Mawgon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a little story set in my "Dwarves care for consent" AU. I have recently come across the "villain forces hero to rape other hero" plot, and asked myself how this would play out if one of the victims was a person who comes from a culture where consent is valued so highly that rape is just not something that anyone does. Ever.<br/>This story is how I imagine it would be. With some added cultural misunderstandings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cultural Misunderstanding

Lín whistled a song as he walked home along the overgrown forest path. He had the piece of root wood his sister needed for the piece of jewelry her elven customer had commissioned, and a lot more to spare.  
The rumours about robbers in this forest had been greatly exaggerated, he had not met a single person since entering it, so he was probably safe now ... wait. There was the sound of steps. 

“Greetings!”

The lone traveler was a Man, so Lín didn’t stop, but just greeted back. 

“You dwarves know a lot about stones, don’t you?”

“Yes ...?” Lín stopped walking and turned half around to face the Man. 

“Could you tell me if this one is valuable?” The stranger handed him a piece of quartz. 

A rather beautiful specimen. Lín examined it more closely. “Oh, that’s a gorgeous one, but I’m afraid it is not very valu-“

The world went black. 

When Lín woke up, he lacked his axe, his bootknife, and everything else on his person that could be used as weapon. 

He was lying in a heap in the corner of some sort of hut, whose walls were mostly wood, but the basement made of red sandstone ... and his head ached. 

Someone kicked him in the side. “Wake up. I haven’t all day.”

Lín opened his eyes. “What do you want? I trust you have already robbed me of everything valuable, so why don’t you leave me alone?”

 

The Man, who was now holding a rather big sword in a rather threatening way, smirked at him. “Oh, I just want to give you some compensation.”

He sat up. The room around him was, indeed, a little hut, the sort where everything needed is contained in two little rooms. He could see the wall with the kitchen chimney in it opposite to him. Next to him was a bed, to which a female Man – a woman – was tied. 

The Man pointed out the plate with cookies on the nightstand. “Take a cookie.”

“You have no right to offer my cookies to anyone!” the Woman spat. 

“What do you want from me?” Lín asked. “You certainly didn’t hit me over the head just to offer me someone else’s cookies.”

“Actually, I wanted to offer you something much better.” The Men gestured towards the Woman. “Her.”

“Excuse me?” Was this all a bad dream? It certainly was not lacking in the weirdness department. Maybe a roasted goose would fly in through the window any time. 

“Rape her.”

Lín eyed the Man, then the Woman. “You seem to have taken her valuables already. I don’t see how I could ...” 

“No, no, TAKE her.”

“Oh, alright.” He got up and began to untie the ropes around the Woman’s hands. He had no idea why the man wanted him to take his prisoner away, but the sooner they both got away from this madman, the better.

“What are you doing?” 

The sword dangerously close to his throat, he decided to stop what he was doing. “If I am to take her anywhere”, Lín explained patiently “I have to untie her hands, first. Obviously.”

“No, no, I didn’t tell you to take her somewhere. Just ...” The Man frowned in concentration. “Stop this nonsense. I told you to ... make love to her.”

“I don’t even know her!” Really, Men! He’d heard they were weird, but this ...

“That’s what makes it interesting.”

“I cannot make love to her.” Lín explained, slowly as he would when talking to a child. It was only children who didn’t understand those things. “I might be able to pretend to make love to her, but ...”

“Alright, then pretend!”

This was ridiculous. He was not an actor. Lín sat next to the bed and started. “Your eyes are more beautiful than brown amber, your hair is like ... um ... shale, and ...” He moved his mouth to the Woman’s ear. “You have weapon?”, he whispered. If he could get his hands on a knife ...

“No! No no, I mean you are to force the physical act of lovemaking on her!”

The mad Man was waving his sword again. Lín couldn’t decide whether to be afraid or exasperated. “You really don’t know what you want, do you?”

“Do it, or I kill you!”

“But if I force it on her, then it’s not lovemaking. Besides, how can I know what to do if you don’t give her time to tell me ...”

“Now! What she wants doesn’t matter!”

“Oh, alright, fine.” Lín ran his fingers through the woman’s hair, then slowly moved his face towards hers. When his ear was close to her mouth, she whispered: “Stall. Time.”

Ah, she wanted him to stall for time. Well, making love was not something to be done in a hurry, so that shouldn’t be a problem. He continued to caress her hair, pressing kisses to the least inappropriate places he could find.

“What do you think you are doing there!”

“Making love!” Lín replied. “Physically. Just like you told me. Changed your mind again?”

“Don’t play stupid! That’s just foreplay! Get to the main act. Now!” The Man waved his sword around. 

“What do you want me to do? Start the wrong way round?” If the Woman had not asked him to stall for time, he’d plain refuse, but as things were, maybe he’d better play along. Hopefully she had a good plan. 

“Yes!”

“But that would mean I fall asleep in her arms. Her arms would have to be free for that.” The mere idea of pretending to make love, physically, was just too weird. It didn’t work that way. Without attraction, it was just ... empty. Made no sense. In the context of a theatre play, maybe, but this here was not an interesting story. 

“No! Start with what you do before you fall asleep.”

“Look, I really try to do what you want, but you aren’t being clear on what that is. I can’t start with the part before I fall asleep because that would involve her touching me. With her hands. Which are, at the moment, tied to the bedposts, if you haven’t noticed.”

The Man gave a frustrated groan. “Then start with the part before that, stupid.”

Lín sighed. That part, regardless of what exactly it consisted of, really was not something he wanted to do with a stranger. But that, apparently, was the whole point of it. The very idea that someone would do something so horrible was shocking. He noticed that his hands trembled. 

“Now!” The swordpoint at his neck forced him to make a decision very fast. 

“Do what he wants, maybe he’ll let us live”, the Woman suggested. 

“Yes, yes, alright, I’ll do it.” He carefully took the Woman’s skirt in his hand and slowly shoved it upwards. Stall for time. 

The mad Man seemed content and moved a bit away. Lín glanced up at the Woman’s face. Her expression was a difficult to read mixture of ... terror, probably, and pleading. 

When he glanced down again, he saw to his surprise that she didn’t wear pants under her skirts. He blushed. If he had known that, he would have ...

“Hurry up!”

“Well, now, that’s the part where she’d put her hand in my hair and pull me to where she wants me, but since her hands are tied ...”

“Just get on with it!”

“How so? If you want me to make love to her, then you have to give me the means to do so!”

“You have the means!”

“No, as I explained, her hands are tied, so ...”

“Just put it where you want!”

“I want to put my whole person out of this hut, if you mean that.” Could he talk the Man into letting them go? He didn’t seem to really know what he wanted, so maybe ...

“No! Listen, just stick your dick into her!”

Lín looked the Man over. Was it just wishful thinking, or had the Man not looked as pale a moment before? “What is a ‘dick’?” 

“The body part you use for making love to a woman.”

And which of those? Really, couldn’t the Man be a bit clearer? “You mean my hands?”

“No! Are you stupid, dwarf?”

“Well, that’s a rather complicated question. I am not very good at mining, which is why I am here in the first place, but I am reasonably good at reading and writing, and you will have noticed I speak Westron almost without an accent ....”

“No more playing stupid. You do what I want now, or ... or ...” The Man now really looked unwell. 

“Look, I am trying to do what you want. You are the one who just can’t say what he wants. So, that part you mentioned ... you mean my tongue? I am very good at writing love poems, by the way, when I am not under pressure. You should ...”

 

The man keeled over. Lín seized the opportunity and wrestled the sword out of his limp hands. 

“Please don’t make a mess on the floor”, the Woman said when he made motions to slice the Man’s throat. 

“You mean he’s dead? That’s why you wanted me to stall for time?” Ill, or poisoned? Maybe there was an illness, like rabies, that Men got? 

“Yes. There’s knives in the kitchen, just cut those ropes and I will help you carry the trash out.”

Sure enough, a drawer in the kitchen contained a nice, sharp knife, and Lín was able to cut the Woman free. Outside the windows, the sunlight had the colour of rubies already, and now that the danger was over, Lín began to feel the pain and other discomforts more. “I’m a tad bit hungry. Would you mind if I helped myself to one of those cookies?”

“Don’t!” the woman said sharply. She rubbed her wrists. “You seem to be a decent sort.”

He drew his hand back. “In comparison to that one there? Well, it’s not very challenging, I’d say.” Then why didn’t he get a cookie?

“Help me carry him outside. I’ll give you a buttered slice of bread, alright?”

“Alright.” Much better than a cookie, anyway, though he was surprised she was so worried about him not losing his appetite for a proper supper. The situation was, after all, rather extraordinary. 

They carried the Man outside, to the edge of the clearing where the hut stood, and the Woman sliced the body’s throat there. “I’m a young woman, living all alone in the woods”, she explained. “I would be stupid to not take precautions.”

Lín nodded. “I see ... the cookies are poisoned?” What a crazy thing to do! But apparently, being crazy prepared paid, if you lived amongst Men. Weird. 

“Yes. I didn’t experiment on people with that poison, obviously, and apparently the poison doesn’t work quite as fast as I hoped it would. Thank you, your stalling was excellent!”

“You think so? I’m afraid I didn’t help much, except that bit at the end where I blabbered on about what being stupid would entail, and so on.”

“You pretended to not know what he wants you to do, didn’t you?”

“I honestly had no idea what he did want.”

She stared at him, absent-mindedly wiping the bloodied knife with her skirts. A pity, they were beautiful, white skirts with embroidery on them. It would take ages to get the blood out again. 

“You did not? You really don’t know what a dick is?”

He had some idea, by excluding other options, he could make an educated guess, but there was something else nagging at the back of his mind. “Oh, wait ... isn’t it the abbreviation for Richard?” He had always wondered about that, considering that there wasn’t even an R in it. 

“That, too, but he meant the body part you use for peeing.”

“Oh! Then why didn’t he just say so?”

“The average man would have done his bidding in less than a quarter of the time you asked questions about what exactly you were being told to do”, the Woman replied, still seeming stunned at his confession. 

“Really? But he was so unclear on what he wanted me to do!” There was probably a reason Dwarves didn’t mingle much with Men. 

“From your point of view, maybe. If you were not stalling for time, or trying to get me free, the thing you said about me needing my hands made no sense to me, either.”

“Oh. Really?” Men decidedly were weird. “I’d explain, only I am not sure if you want me to. See, that’s not something usually talked about among strangers ...”

“Oh, please do explain, if it is all the same to you.” The Woman smiled. “You should not travel at night anyway, so we have plenty of time to talk.”

“Thank you! You did say something about bread ...”

“Bread, and butter, and I think I have some vegetables for a stew, too. But first, let’s find your weapons. You had some with you, I take it?”

“Yes ... the knife I am not going to miss so much, but I really need my axe.” And the wood. And everything else. 

They found his things on the path, close to where he had met the Man. The Woman insisted on carrying his axe for him, which was really nice of her, especially as his head still ached a bit from the blow the Man must have dealt to it. 

As they walked back to the hut, curiosity got the better of him. “I hope you won’t think it too forward of me, but would you explain to me why it is that the Man thought you’d not need your hands? And why you thought the same?”

“Of course. Though I must ask you not to tell other dwarves.”

“Why not?” It couldn’t be such a secret, after all. Not if they had assumed he knew. 

“I fear your people will think even worse of Men than you already do.”


End file.
